A place for couples dealing with illness to find resources and advice, hear stories, and discover support. Whether the illness is chronic or acute, the result of disease or accident, couples can learn strategies for coping with the changes illness brings into our relationships and our worlds.
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In this post, I write about another dimension of personality preference- the dimension that is about one's basic orientation to the world. Within this dimension people tend to have a preference for either Judging or Perceiving.

Judging does not mean being judgmental. Rather it means that one prefers to move towards organization and closure -- to consider a defined set of options, make a clear choice, and head toward action. A Perceiving preference means that one likes to remain flexible, adaptable, and to keep options open and add choices to the mix.

Neither preference is better. And we all have both Judging and Perceiving capabilities and can be both flexible and decisive. But, we tend to have a natural affinity for one or the other.

I have a strong preference for Judging. Richard has a strong preference for Perceiving.

If I am hungry, I like to decide what food I want, pick a restaurant, and get in the car. Richard likes to play what he calls "the restaurant game." He likes to keep throwing out cuisine and restaurant choices up until the moment we arrive at the door of the restaurant we had originally agreed we would go to. For him, this is creative. For me, this is madness.

How does this Judging-Perceiving difference play out in terms of illness?

My pain condition was (and is) a diagnostic mystery. This meant that I saw dozens of specialists in different disciplines and had dozens and dozens of tests. The ongoingness of this experience and the increasing number of options for diagnosis and treatment pushed me so far out of my comfort zone that I fell off the edge of reason and landed into a stinky puddle of blithering anxiety. I wanted the answer!

In the face of the unknown, Richard was reassured by the plenitude of options. His mantra became, "There's always someting more to try." Each successive doorway was a portal that could lead to something that might work to quiet my pain. Another thing to be tried was another reason for hope.

Understanding MBTI gave us tools and a language for harmonizing our differences. He wasn't a foolish dreamer; and I wasn't a narrow-minded dogmatist. We were just different. I'm a "J" and he's a "P."

Richard learned to temper his plasticity with some empathy for my frustrated drive for certainty. And I learned, when the known doors closed, to find some solace in his faith that something else, some healer or medication waiting just around the next corner, might work.

1 comment:

Anonymous
said...

My husband just completed a 12 month treatment for Hep C. Because we are both Perceivers it was an endless twisty road to navigate all the symptoms - and remedies. Thanks for helping me understand this AND why are restaurant decisions take sooo long.

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About Me

In November, 1999 I was whacked with a mysterious chronic pain syndrome that took me out of my life. With the help of my husband, my dog, and a combination of western and alternative approaches, I have a new life that includes working, writing, mountain climbing, smiling, and managing pain. I learned a lot along the way, especially about illness and the couple relationship. I'm also a psychotherapist, a business consultant, and have written a book about couples and illness, which was published in March 2013 (Roundtree Press)

“Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.”Susan Sontag